Series of Tubes

Washington DC doesn't make toasters or computer chips, but it makes one thing ... information. There is so much mail magazines fliers that come into this office on a daily basis. Every member of Congress gets just about every national magazine for free. So in our magazine rack there is everything from The Economist Wired Magazine Forbes Atlantic Monthly Sports Illustrated. We get the really obscure trade magazines like Pig Farmers Monthly. If its out there it seems to find a way to our door. I guess every magazine wants to whisper in Caesars ear.

One duty of any intern is to sort the mail and sadly Pig Farmers Monthly doesn't make the cut. Sorting the mail is like being a human spam filter. Mail here, is just like back home 80 percent is junk, but there are a few key things that float through.

The amazing part of the mail system is how many times it is handled before it gets to the end of the line. Since the anthrax scare of 2002 every piece of mail is opened in an undisclosed location taken out of its envelope stapled to the envelope and put into a color coded envelope. Then its loaded on to a truck and sent to the House or Senate office buildings then its inspected again and delivered to the Congressional Offices. Then it finds its way to my desk where I sort the mail and throw out .. i mean recycle much of it. I gets sorted into two main groups constituent mail and issue mail to the Legislative Assistants. Constituent mail has to be checked by zip code and then sent to the district office. If it doesn't have a zip code it gets tossed. Then the Legislative Assistants read the mail toss most of what i put in their box.

We probably get several hundred pieces of mail two to three times a day. Then times that by 435 Congressmen and 100 Senators and you will get a sense of how much mail comes through Capitol Hill.

Well lets say that you e-mail the Congressmen instead of mailing it to him. The fax machine/printer prints it out for a hard copy. Then it is mailed to the district office. Why can't the e-mails be forwarded to the district office? This place is definitely low tech. No wonder Congress thinks the "internets" is a series of tubes and is not a truck.